Home assistant build

Hi all,  this is my second time making my controller, the first time I fried the board and Rob was kind enough to send me another one.  I am documenting my build with home assistant (HA) as a reference for others.  I am having issues posting pictures so i have attached it here.

Background:
I have home assistant running in a VM in my synology for about 6 months, and have a lot of things integrated like thermostats, powerbars, garage door openers etc.  It is also controlling the timers for my fish tank via tasmota flashed powerbars in which I have 3.  I am not exactly happy with my setup as I dont want to overdose kalk for example and nuke my tank.

Currently I have a ATO controller and a temperature controller running, I want the reefpi to replace it.  Other equipment like pump, skimmer, dosing pump etc are controlled by HA.  Unfortunately the dosing pump i have is a BRS AC dosing pump so cannot use the DC port functions, I may change it at a later date.

Tank: SW tank 120g + sump with a skimmer, AI lights, 3 powerbars controlled by HA, dosing pump, skimmer, ATO, ecotech powerhead + battery backup etc.

So far I only have the temperature probes and pH probes in the tank monitoring.  I did the temperature calibration (using my inkbird) and the temperature seems to match.  The pH probe is also functional but I am not sure if i trust the reading.  First I calibrated it using the provided calibration fluid @ 6.86 + 9.18, however when I put it in the calibration fluid it would show a different result.  Not sure if it is a setting, but i ended up calibrating it to my pH pen.  I will slowly move my heaters over to the reef pi once I get more comfortable.
With many hours on R2R, I have the float sensors, pi status etc communicating with the HA via MQTT, and HA can control the reefpi via API.  Currently the reefpi is on wifi but I will eventually put it on ethernet.  I am more familiar with HA and I think I can create a more robust system using HA.  So I am planning to put all the logic on HA and using the reefpi simply as input/ output interface.

Currently with my kalk automation, it turns on and off via a timer and has been pretty reliable.  In the case where I restart my HA during the time the timer turns off.  I also have a alarm in parallel to monitor how long the switch turns on, if the switch is on more than the intended time HA will notify me.  

I hit many bumps trying to get reefpi to communicate to HA, get the reef pi cookie, getting the equipment pinouts etc.  If there are interests I can share my code in the post.  

The left most column is my AI lights, showing the channel schedule.  Bottom left is my tasmota powerbar.
The middle column shows the temperature of the reefpi as well as sensor status.
The right column shows the pH as well as controls of the AC & DC ports (DC are not mapped yet.)

Enjoy.


Im retarded and dont know how to post pictures - added attachments.
 

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Very cool, I think it's awesome reef-pi can integrate into these 3rd party apps.

What kind of readings were you getting for pH? It's common if you use say 6.86 it won't read that but should be somewhat close. If you did a single point calibration with 6.86 after setting point one you should then get 6.86 from the probe after you close the calibration window. The value showing in that is always the uncalibrated value so you can only see the effects once you enable the pH.

Sorry about the crappy forum, it's frustrating there are no extensions to make it easier unless the images are hosted on a 3rd party site which I'm not really a fan of. It seems forum packages like this aren't widely used anymore because of social media they say, so development has come to nearly a standstill and few are making extensions now.
 
Rob F said:
Very cool, I think it's awesome reef-pi can integrate into these 3rd party apps.

What kind of readings were you getting for pH? It's common if you use say 6.86 it won't read that but should be somewhat close. If you did a single point calibration with 6.86 after setting point one you should then get 6.86 from the probe after you close the calibration window. The value showing in that is always the uncalibrated value so you can only see the effects once you enable the pH.

Sorry about the crappy forum, it's frustrating there are no extensions to make it easier unless the images are hosted on a 3rd party site which I'm not really a fan of. It seems forum packages like this aren't widely used anymore because of social media they say, so development has come to nearly a standstill and few are making extensions now.


Rob,  I was confused about the term 'mid point' in the calibration.  Maybe I was doing something wrong.

First time i did it i had 6.86 and 9.18 solution.  So i put the probe in 6.86 and entered it in midpoint.  Repeat that with 9.18 in second point.  Then I left the probe in the 9.18 solution and it was showing 9.5.

Unless it was meant to put the midpoint, (6.86 + 9.18 )/2 = 8.02, so I enter 8.02 as mid point and 9.5 as second point?  If that is the correct way I will calibrate it again.

The way I did it is not so good, I used a pH pen to measure the water and used that to calibrate my probe using a single point calibration.  I think the value relatively should be correct, just not sure about the precision of the measurement.
 
Sounds like you did it correct the first time, maybe you didn't leave the probe in solution long enough, it can take a while to stabilize, maybe try leaving it 10 minutes or something, don't press the set button until it's stable. I don't think you did but don't close the calibration window until both points are done.
 
I forgot to ask about the HA graphs, can you set a rolling average? That would smooth out the lines.
 
Ok will try to calibrate it again.

I'm still learning HA, the default lovelace is a no frills version. I can export that to grafana and do more customization with it. I think Ranjib from R2R is looking at it also.

I got a RP3B+, now wished i got the RSP4 as it comes with USB3. Now i'm thinking of getting a SSD via USB 2.0 to run the OS as the micro sd isnt so reliable. Has anyone done it yet?
 
Thought I would see if anyone uses SSD. I hear it's a good upgrade to do, even a USB stick is probably better than SD card, I've seen tutorials on booting from one but haven't tried it yet.

The Pi4 is nice but 3 runs a lot cooler, the 4 can get quite hot.
 
I've been having issues with pH, I actually bought 2 probes - cheap ones, I calibrated using the 2 point method, and after a few days it would have a sudden drop and get out of range.  Not sure if it is a setup issue or a probe issue.

I tried with both probes and they both did the same thing with a sudden drop.  Any suggestions on how to fix it or a good pH probe?
 

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Interesting, sounds like something is interfering, any chance something is turning on when that happens? Have you tried disconnecting everything from controller and running only the probe for a few hours? Is the probe cable running near any AC cords?

Did the probe calibrate ok? If the values you got during the calibration were close to expected I would think the probe is ok but I have seen strange results with a bad probe. I think it might be worth a little more troubleshooting before getting another probe but this is a decent one.

https://www.amazon.ca/Milwaukee-Ins...6&sr=1-1-f0029781-b79b-4b60-9cb0-eeda4dea34d6

I see what looks like a probe fully submersed in your pic of tank, if that's correct most probes can't be fully submersed, only the bottom half or so.
 
It looks like it happened at 23:11 pm, and i tracked my home assistant logs and don't find anything wrong.

[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]The probe did calibate ok, and i was giving good values within the threshold for a few days.  [/font]The probe was 90% submerged, the top was not submerged.  I took it out even more now it is 50% submerged.

I dont have the controller mounted properly just yet as a few things are still not working the way it should.  So i have it temporary running on the top of the tank like the picture shows, beside 2 temperature probes.

On the backside of the glass there is a MP40, it isn't AC but could cause some interference.

I will calibrate it again and submerge only the tip and see what happens.

Also I have changed course, and will not use HA to control it, and will change and use RP to create macros and use HA to collect data and send alarm only.  

Thanks.
 

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In the pic it looked fully submersed but hard to tell, should be ok as you have it.

What are you seeing in reef-pi, does it report the 0 ph as well? I'm guessing it does but wondering if HA is somehow reporting it wrong.

When this happened did a reset get it working again? How many times has it happened?
 
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